ad no doubt
the inscription was made long ago by some natives of America."
_Proceedings of Massachusetts Historical Society_, vol. x. p.
115. This pleasant anecdote shows in a new light Washington's
accuracy of observation and unfailing common-sense. Such
inscriptions have been found by the thousand, scattered over
all parts of the United States; for a learned study of them see
Garrick Mallery, "Pictographs of the North American Indians,"
_Reports of Bureau of Ethnology_, iv. 13-256. "The voluminous
discussion upon the Dighton rock inscription," says Colonel
Mallery, "renders it impossible wholly to neglect it.... It is
merely a type of Algonquin rock-carving, not so interesting as
many others.... It is of purely Indian origin, and is executed
in the peculiar symbolic character of the Kekeewin," p. 20. The
characters observed by Washington in the Virginia forests would
very probably have been of the same type. Judge Davis, to whom
Dr. Lathrop's letter was addressed, published in 1809 a paper
maintaining the Indian origin of the Dighton inscription.

A popular error, once started on its career, is as hard to kill
as a cat. Otherwise it would be surprising to find, in so
meritorious a book as Oscar Peschel's _Geschichte des
Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, Stuttgart, 1877, p. 82, an
unsuspecting reliance upon Rafn's ridiculous interpretation of
this Algonquin pictograph. In an American writer as well
equipped as Peschel, this particular kind of blunder would of
course be impossible; and one is reminded of Humboldt's remark,
"Il est des recherches qui ne peuvent s'executer que pres des
sources memes." _Examen critique_, etc., tom. ii. p. 102.

In old times, I may add, such vagaries were usually saddled
upon the Phoenicians, until since Rafn's time the Northmen have
taken their place as the pack-horses for all sorts of
antiquarian "conjecture."]

[Footnote 259: See Palfrey's _History of New England_, vol. i.
pp. 57-59; Mason's _Reminiscences of Newport_, pp. 392-407.
Laing (_Heimskringla_, pp. 182-185) thinks the Yankees must
have intended to fool Professor Rafn and the Royal Society of
Antiquaries at Copen